Pages

Friday, February 27, 2015

Temecula, CA – I remember Leonard Nimoy from a lot of
things, mostly movies like a lot of people but there was a time when he didn’t
want to be remembered as Spock. That would be the time when I met him.

Star Trek had ended its three year run and the cartoon
series had also done its first run with the actor’s voiceovers. Nimoy was ready
to move on and had written a book entitled, “I Am Not Spock”. It was more than his
attempt from being typecast, it was an effort to separate Leonard Nimoy from
the character Spock. He had played a successful character on Mission Impossible
but Spock was indelible. People saw Nimoy as Spock with or without the ears.

In the years after the series was cancelled, reruns were run
every afternoon when Wesley [Memoirs] and I would watch while we burned a couple
of trees [joints], laughing our asses off and Monday-Morning quarterbacking on
whether ‘Jim’ made the right call or if the alien women Kirk banged were
'pink on the inside'. While we guys wondered about Kirk’s love life the women
were swooning over the always rational Spock and wondering about his Vulcan
anatomy.

Temecula, CA - Stopping to pick up my favorite weekly
reader, seeing the latest feel-good cancer story, business back-slapping event,
how-to-have-good-daffodils-use-good-dirt story, I thank my lucky stars the
Calendar has no ad-glass ceiling. In a Christian valley it is important to be
on the narrow path because the narrow path reveals the truth. How do I know? The
Bible told me so.

The narrow path doesn’t just reveal the truth however, it is
also a lonely path hence the constraint of being narrow. Being narrow doesn’t
constitute there are no fellow travelers, but we travel at different places on the narrow path and at different rates. The trick is there are more than one narrow
paths so now and then you can cross another.

Once again a mole familiar with the Calendar story alerted me
and several others to the common theme. The story, one I posted almost a year
ago, continues to move in and out of the Top Ten every time an Asian airliner
crashes. Checking the web several months ago on the theme of my story and as
before, there appeared no theory or story with the same angle. Now an aviation analysis
has risked his bankroll and reputation to say the same thing my foreign mole tipped to me lo these many months ago; Flight MH370 flew north, not south to the Indian
Ocean. It’s a wise confirmation, to say the least in non-capitalized form.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Yesterday, Tuesday Feb 24, 2015, Alaska became the third U.S. state to
legalize the recreational use of marijuana for adults, but it was a
subdued milestone.

Unlike in Colorado and Washington state, there were no street parties
and public smoking displays in Alaska’s biggest cities. But backers of
legal pot said the mild reaction was fitting because they are aiming to
promote responsible consumption of marijuana as they work with lawmakers
during the next few months in preparing its sale.

On this Tuesday, police in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, were
prepared to hand out $100 fines for people smoking marijuana in public.
But officers working the first shift after it became legal at 12:01 a.m.
didn’t encounter anyone consuming marijuana in public.

Placing Alaska in the same category as Washington state and Colorado
with legal marijuana was the goal of the pro-pot coalition that included
libertarians, rugged individualists and small-government Republicans
who prize the privacy rights enshrined in the Alaska state constitution.
Legalization is expected in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Temecula, CA – Someday the adults here, certainly the cool
ones into music anyway, will sing the praises of how a small out-of-the-way
community could birth such a wide range of musical talent, and
of those who
brought said sounds to

the youths’ ears like modern Piped Pipers.

Yesterday I was speaking to one of those Pipers, the owner
of Full Value Entertainment, Bill
Gould, Jr.

“Well since Ivan left the valley, there is a vacuum for presenting
new music to the public now, so we are back to fill it. Suite 100 is our first
show. It is the CD release event for the band. Spread the word!”

Or words to that effect because my mind was already drifting
back through history to Bill’s early days at Madlins through the Java Joz daze
and the new talent spotted in the Temecula Music Fest. For a while both Ivan
and Bill filled now young adults’ ears with the freshest music to never see
radio airplay. Then as if someone flipped a switch, that local music scene
died. I then flashed back to the future.

“Our first show is March 7th at the Broadway
Starz Playhouse venue,” Bill said, his eyes sparkling bright, “and there’s
more.”

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Temecula, CA – Artists are artists and as such are sometimes
temperamental. Watching the video of Afroman aka Joseph Foreman throw a
haymaker without looking and then pick up his solo certainly makes the point of
giving a performer his space onstage, especially during a solo when many
artists have their eyes closed. It looks as brutal as the football player’s GF
getting punched in that elevator. However, as bad as it looks in the vid, you
see her getting up, dazed or shocked, then walk off the stage. Afroman’s show
was cancelled and the performer was charged with simple assault and released on
$330 bond.

Lost in a sea of moral and racially motivated outrage is the
fact that Foreman has apologized publicly on facebook and owned up to his
mistake. The rapper said he'd seek anxiety treatment and anger management after
the assault. Despite the fact Afroman struck a white woman in the heart of
Mississippi, this wasn’t a hate crime. Afroman explained that he was feeling queasy
about the early show, his rep said Afroman didn’t see the woman climb onstage
[security?] and he was startled, plus this is Mardi Gras season. So what does
that mean? Simply this. If you have ever been in the South, you know the magic
and the strange karma of stuff there.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Temecula, CA – The underground is getting as hot as the
corner, especially in Mary Jane Green's neighborhood at the intersection
of Commerce Ave and Cannabis Street. At this point of my sequel to Memoirs, I got to roll into a section of town known for High Times. Once again the
red phone rang. I answered “Hello” and that’s where this adventure began.
Assignment – The Cannabis Cup, NOS Center, San Bernardino.

As I packed my kit bag, gathered my train schedules, and made
a list of stuff to do while in LA for the day before heading up to
Claremont to couch surf on a yeoman’s weekend, working the booth for the 300,000
member California Cannabis Coalition headed by Craig Beresh, I reflected. The High Times
Cannabis Cup, the premium marijuana trade show, is the most well-known inside a 'cannabis industry' which was once just a niche market regarded much like a
trailer-trash traveling carnival.

Now, just as hip-hop allowed fat guys to get laid, cannabis
has made glamorous, in the original magical sense of the word, tattoos. Once
the sole territory of Marlboro Men, soldiers, and sailors, tats now grace
a growing segment of women's bodies, particularly in the cannabis
culture younger demo. Also I wondered about a generation gap seen in the demo at the LA NORML meetings; it is a
general discord found in grassroots protests that I have been involved in
and is curious, to say the least. So I wondered about The Cup's demographics as well.

And yes Sports Fans, my two favorite 420Nurses were there. I
saw them from afar for all of 30 seconds.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Temecula, CA – Though it seems fitting as bookends to
present this story next, regular readers may be wondering about the hiatus that
began on January 18th. Well Sports Fans, I was signing a petition
against GMO salmon online when the lights when out, nuff said.

Though off the air, I wasn’t out of touch so in the next few
days some stories will appear about my off-air adventures with The Baked and The Beautiful but first
let’s pick up our story that we last left on ‘1st Down’.

Club Cosplay showed a huge turnout of about a thousand happy
Nerds in the New Year and press that was covered in the hipster LA BUZZ, the latest entry in a field
once owned by LA WEEKLY [still worth
a read]. OHM Niteclub housed the scene debut in the major market and the ‘buzz’
generated was to be used to fuel the fire for the House of Blues, San Diego,
event just two weeks before the Long Beach Comic Con. But the underlying reason
for planning this Cosplay event on St. Valentine’s Day for Ivan Promotions was
admiration rather than super hero worship, an admiration that turned to love.